-
-
- Video: Paterson, NJ raises the Palestinian flag over city hall … 9
- Princeton students ‘come out’ for Palestine to overcome shame attached … 4
- Jim from Newport Township, Illinois asks the wrong question 8
- There’s been a sea change in US opinion on the … 20
- Former AIPAC lobbyist assumes weighty mantle (and travel budget) of … 18
- Press Release: Isabel Kershner chosen to reveal future Israeli exonerations 6
- As Israel’s occupation drags on, boycotts are one way forward 1
- Both Massad, and ‘Open Zion’, ignore the experience of Middle … 28
-
- Israeli airport sorts passengers with ‘Jewish stickers’ and ‘Arab stickers’ 796
- ‘Newseum’ folds under pressure, will not include Gaza cameramen in … 314
- Two friends meet for 5 minutes in Jerusalem 230
- In photos: Gaza marches and rallies mark 65 years of … 149
- Washington Post’s racism map omits Israel 111
- Barbara Boxer’s visa bill for Israel comes under concerted attack 103
- Washington state bus-ad campaign dares to state: ‘Equal rights for … 100
- Guatemalan genocide got assist from US, Christian Right, and Israel 75
-
- International Criminal Court opens preliminary investigation into attack on Mavi … 96
- Barbara Boxer’s visa bill for Israel comes under concerted attack 86
- Abulhawa declines to ‘balance out’ several Israelis in ‘Al Jazeera’ … 83
- Washington Post’s racism map omits Israel 73
- Kennedy’s insistence on right of return prompted Ben-Gurion to rewrite … 69
- Israeli airport sorts passengers with ‘Jewish stickers’ and ‘Arab stickers’ 69
- Uncompromising hope inspired by Ghassan Kanafani 63
- ‘Newseum’ folds under pressure, will not include Gaza cameramen in … 62
-
- The Latest from Mondoweiss for 05/22/2013 - http://t.co/5ZF2Y6QALN, 14 mins ago
- RT @ggreenwald: From AJ Editor RT @hash_said @WHarkavy It was a temporary glitch. It's back up., 16 hours ago
- RT @WHarkavy: .@Mondoweiss @ggreenwald Right now, at least, column and editor's note aren't on Al Jazeera site. Here's an alt link http://t…, 16 hours ago
- Jim from Newport Township, Illinois asks the wrong question http://t.co/dezeLR7gp1, 16 hours ago
- Princeton students ‘come out’ for Palestine to overcome shame attached to issue in U.S. http://t.co/LCs1vTVK44, 16 hours ago
-
Recent Comments
click link to see last 100 comments- Widely denounced as ‘propaganda,’ Israel’s report on al-Dura calls attention to 950 other child killings (19)
- thankgodimatheist: Plantu, the iconic Le Monde cartoonist, dedicates a piece for Charles Enderlin and Al Durra:...
- Abulhawa declines to ‘balance out’ several Israelis in ‘Al Jazeera’ forum on Nakba (83)
- Shingo: Woody, you use the qualifier “save those actively working for Palestinian freedom”. Susan didn’t. Would have...
- German Lefty: Don’t be stupid. They live under an apartheid system. You were the one who claimed that throwing all...
- German Lefty: You wanna also call the rape victim ‘prejudiced’ cuz they’re not interested in debating the trauma of...
- Jim from Newport Township, Illinois asks the wrong question (8)
- eGuard: A curious thing. According to Mayer, in The New Yorker, the documentary was aired on [Monday] November 12,...
- Kennedy’s insistence on right of return prompted Ben-Gurion to rewrite history: They fled ‘of their own free will’ (69)
- Both Massad, and ‘Open Zion’, ignore the experience of Middle Eastern Jews (28)
- thankgodimatheist: Spot on, Keith. And to consider the chutzpah in calling Massad racist.
- thankgodimatheist: “Jesus Christ, can’t you people use the plain, simple words for things that we have in...
- There’s been a sea change in US opinion on the conflict (20)
- chinese box: The only people I meet who express strong support for Israel are 1. Jewish (and obviously I don’t...
- Widely denounced as ‘propaganda,’ Israel’s report on al-Dura calls attention to 950 other child killings (19)
Our Writers
More WritersBlogroll
The War of Ideas in the Middle East
You know, it was really awesome to see that.
(I wish I had a more profound comment, but really, these students speak for themselves quite well.)
I google “ucb smelko”, and the top return is: link to israelforum.com (from March 25th).
I think google should be retuning its bias?
Great news. Thanks for the post.
Thank you Adam for sharing those inspiring clips of the students’ heartfelt comments.
It was fascinating to hear that Jewish woman who voted for the Divestment, explainign that she was fearful beacuase she had received personal threats since voting for it.
Still, on a level way below the post: what is the relevance of her being “Jewish”? Why mentioning her Jewishness? Were the threats related to her being Jewish? Were she not Jewish, should she (and we) expect an other treatment? Non-Jews are not threatened? Really, I’m missing the follow-up of your eh insinuation.
EGuard, i’m surprised this is even a question. Conscientious Jews who take a stand against the massacre in Gaza are routinely called sElf-hating Jews and ostracized from the community. The pressure on the senators of Berkeley is tremendous.
Goldstone has been ostracized from his grandson’s bar-mitzvah. It’s strikingly relevant.
I understand that the adjective is used in AIPAC-policy to determine which hammer to use: the “anti-semitic” one or the “self-hating”. My question was about using it on this side of the discussion: copying an opponents trick, is lowering the level. (clearly, I should not have used the loaded “insinuation”, but the more rational word “suggestion”, sorry for that).
Should not we hear & read the arguments first, without issuing colored glasses? Would the Goldstone report be different had it not been presided by a non-Jewish judge? Every time I read such things, I sense a small victory for those imposing a language.
RE: “Why mentioning her Jewishness? Were the threats related to her being Jewish? Were she not Jewish, should she (and we) expect an other treatment?” – eGuard
EXCERPT: “There is a belief amongst right-wing Zionist organisations that defaming and humiliating Jewish critics of Israeli policy, will set an example that would intimidate others into silence,” Isaacs, co-ordinator of a community-based education NGO, said.
Isaacs led a Jewish youth movement that campaigned for a just resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict…
SOURCE – link to english.aljazeera.net
EXCERPT: …It is clear that Goldstone’s exclusion from the synagogue service was designed at the highest levels. Does this mean that Jewish dissidents against Israel can expect this treatment more generally? Will family members be prevented from attending weddings? Will children be prevented from attending their parents’ funerals?
The consequences of this development are severe. It implies that the boundaries of Jewish identity are now determined by one’s political belief and conduct in relation to one particular political situation, that between Israel and the Palestinians. No matter how fine a person, no matter what contribution to society is made – and Justice Goldstone’s lifetime of work for peace and justice is hard to equal – if a Jew oversteps the line in criticising or exposing the very real political and military abuses of the Israeli state will his or her citizenship of the Jewish community be effectively revoked? – Open Shuhadah Street, 04/16/10
SOURCE – link to bolekaja.wordpress.com
Wow. Any response to this post from Zionists?
Absent the comments of those that differ with you, that video is not “the war of ideas” but the propaganda of ideas.
Why not give people the material to decide for themselves?
Richard- Adam already posted the (tired and familiar) talking points of the anti-divestment contingent yesterday, points reportedly closely adhered to by the speakers:
Talking points in response to talking points.
Don’t be dismissive. Its not dialog, its propaganda.
What the hell are you babbling about, Dick?
Its not dialog, its propaganda.
You’re the one being dismissive, Witty. You’re calling it propaganda, when you should be calling it mutual dialogue.
That’s the maximalist approach.
Propaganda is one-way. It considers the comments of the other as dismissable.
The invocation of “talking points” to describe any other person’s comments, is dismissive.
If you want to prove your point that you are not dismissive, model it by actual dialog.
You know well that I have calmly and relatively articulately described my perspective, which you are free to disagree with. But, to ridicule is not to disagree.
Its a statement of intellectual poverty on your part.
Propaganda is one-way. It considers the comments of the other as dismissable.
But you are the one dismissing the side here. Berkeley listened to both sides. You have the maximalist approach of rebuking one side. That does not build bridges, it burns it. That destroys mutual reconciliation.
The invocation of “talking points” to describe any other person’s comments, is dismissive.
I agree. The anti-divestment camp should have rejected the talking points distributed to them and campaigned on independence of thought and variability of opinion, instead of speaking what was fed to them.
But, to ridicule is not to disagree.
Its a statement of intellectual poverty on your part.
Witty, again you are attacking the messenger and not the message. That approach does not heal, it only hurts. It makes enemies, not friends. You are promoting divide and differences when we need friendly debate and mutual reconciliation.
That is the result of calling one entire side of argument, propaganda. It is narrow minded and stunts progress.
Berkeley listened to both sides. This video didn’t present that there were multiple perspectives.
I’m criticizing the content of the film. If Adam didn’t want the film to the subject, then he shouldn’t have put it up.
This site criticizes the media spin as one of its primary foci. It is on the table.
The Berkeley student senate listened to both sides of the argument for 6 straight hours, and voted 16 to 4 in favor of divestment. That result was vetoed by a guy who declined
to listen to the debate. Although action to overturn the one vote veto was tabled, the majority was/is overwhelmingly in favor of divestment. As to propaganda, Phil has already posted arguments in favor of divestment, and he has also posted the hasbara talking points and modus operandi; these subjects were extensively commented on over the last few days. I leave you readers to review all this and decide for yourself whether Witty’s characterization of “Talking points in response to talking points” is an honest appraisal, and whether he is the one being dismissive, not engaging in dialog, but propaganda.
Phil has not posted the arguments against BDS, except to ridicule them, at least not yet.
Excerpt:
“The most important point is however the following, which is repeated in a number of variants:
The message: The bill is an attack on our Jewish community. It silences our voices….
The Bill is out of context and based on questionable sources (no need to go into detail). Thus, the bill is in fact an attack on the JEWISH COMML]NITY.
An unjustified attack on Israel is an attack on my Jewish identity. It is attacking ME. (Indybay)
Two important observations need to be made about this strategy. First, Jewish organizations are borrowing the language of marginalization and victimization in the name of the most affluent U.S. identity. Silencing Jews? You gotta be kidding? With leading op-ed writers in practically every newspaper, presenters, editors, anchors and writers in every TV station, over-representation in Congress, a whole cast of members of every US administration in the last few decades, and a slew of top positions in the Forbes list of richest individuals, who can even think of “silencing the voices of Jews”? This not just wrong and silly on the facts, but also an absolutely offensive and disgusting appropriation of the language of empowerment, taking for a ride the real victims of the persistent racism, sexism, homophobia and intolerance that runs deep in US society. That Jewish student organizations can afford spitting in the face of Black, Latino, Queer, Muslim and other students who really belong to groups that are regularly and systematically silenced is a measure of the power they yield. They can talk about racism until the cows come out, but in their actions they put Jews on the side of the perpetrators of racism, not on the side of victims.
Second, the attack on the divestment resolution continues to establish a series of equivalences that testify to deep Jewish folly: US corporations equal the occupation equal Israel equal the Jewish community of Berkeley. No antisemitic demagogue has made this equivalence so convincingly. The equation between capitalism and Jews was (and still is) a figment of the antisemitic imagination. The equation between world Jews and the actions of the state of Israel is universally recognized as racist, and is even part of wretched EUMC “working definition of antisemitism”, which lists as an example of antisemitism, “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel”. But thanks to AIPAC, J-Street and Hillel, putting pressure on General Electric because it profits from the occupation of the West Bank is now claimed as “an attack on the Jewish community”. Jewish organizations could not better promote an antisemitic understanding of the world if they went and painted Swastikas on the doors of their offices themselves.”
link to jewssansfrontieres.blogspot.com
“Phil has not posted the arguments against BDS, except to ridicule them, at least not yet.”
That’s not his job, it’s your’s. So get busy, I’m sure you can think of something!
The point of the one girl “…we place a lot more importance in certain regions than other regions…,” that is a really seminal point in the light of the fact that this was a call of divestment of corporations supporting colonial occupation. The fact of the matter is, for there to really be a “rule of law,” it must be applicable to ALL countries – not just “third world” countries, the weak and poor. That even the darlings of hegemony (Israel) are subject to law.
I am afraid my quote from Nir Rosen is getting repetitious, however, maybe it should be, because it is the truth and the truth bears repeating –
“Normative rules are determined by power relations. Those with power determine what is legal and illegal. They besiege the weak in legal prohibitions to prevent the weak from resisting. For the weak to resist is illegal by definition. Concepts like terrorism are invented and used normatively as if a neutral court had produced them, instead of the oppressors. The danger in this excessive use of legality actually undermines legality, diminishing the credibility of international institutions such as the United Nations. It becomes apparent that the powerful, those who make the rules, insist on legality merely to preserve the power relations that serve them or to maintain their occupation and colonialism.”
GAZA: THE LOGIC OF COLONIAL POWER
Therefore, it takes movement by the people, because the powerful will not apply the law to their own . It takes a University known for its fairness and track record of supporting human rights in the belly of the beast (so to speak), to make an impact. When the law has ceased to function, because of the enfranchised and powerful spurn it, it is time for a higher law, and that is the people. All power to the people.
IT AIN’T OVER
And when the people apply something different than the rule of law, in their effort to hold power accountable?
Or when the next pendulum swing creates a different set of abusive powers that be?
You going to turn on the people that you just supported?
In fact.
More abstractions. Did you forget you meds today?
Since Dick, wants to literally turn ‘yesterday’ into ‘history’ – here’s the link to the Zionist groups’ agenda as reported by the blog:
link to mondoweiss.net
Ignore Dick Witty’s obfuscation and just read the plain truth. Straight from the Zionist’s mouth.
More brilliant responses from our man with backbone.
I actually consider myself an independant thinker. I don’t receive any e-mails from any Zionist organization, or any communication whatsoever.
The publication of talking points is an effort to dismiss, rather than an effort to justice, which requires reconciliation.
Again, there is justice that oriented towards vengeance for the past (its an affront to justice actually). And there is a justice that is an attempt to heal so that the present to the future is an acceptable one, an optimal one.
The first is the application and imposition of power, in the name of opposing the abuses of power. The second is the restoration of respect.
“The first is the application and imposition of power, in the name of opposing the abuses of power. The second is the restoration of respect.”
The third is the negation of conflict, the inversion of power relations leading to a paroxysmal rendering of healing and despair,culminating in a harmonious confluence of vapid oratory and nonsensical verbiage. Or some shit like that.
“The publication of talking points is an effort to dismiss”
The word salad at the end of your post was hard to resist, but I should have responded to this earlier part, which was coherent but wrong. The publication of talking points is a way of pointing out an embarrassingly propagandistic tactic employed by the anti-divestment side. You’d apparently prefer people not notice how false and manipulative these tactics were. If you want honest discussion, you should be condemning such tactics and not criticizing those who expose them.
Donald, I am actually wondering about Richard’s style again lately too (“word salad), I had to really force myself to not not point it out lately. His main problem seems pressure or too fast responses. I’d really like to know the difference between the relatively</i clear RW and the grammatically and stylistically distorted one. Is it connected to context, as I early wondered?
The publication of talking points is an effort to dismiss, rather than an effort to justice, which requires reconciliation.
If you look at the first two paragraphs he actually condemns the use of talking points. That’s his self-perception. If no one tells him what to think about it, so he must a politically correct moderate and obviously only the other side are “fascists”. (the idea of decades of rigid conventions, conventions he keeps up, would of course complicate matters)
Is calling someone a fascist according to RW to “calmly and relatively articulately” describing his perspective too? He didn’t use it here more frequently again not long ago. What this reminded me of were early encounters with the orthodox organized left in the early seventies. Fascist was a term that needed no definition, but was constantly thrown into the discourse by true believers that felt their respective “bibles” challenged.
The fear of revenge –your word salad– indicates that beneath his “calm and articulate” argument there is a realization of wrongs done. Wrongs of course that have to be kept under the carpet by continuation along the same rigid Iron Wall road like Lebanon, and lately Gaza. Are people that challenged the wisdom of the Gaza war fascists too?
sorry I wish I could delete my last comment and check the html tags. No idea why happened here. Were is the bold tag? Strange actually there was no bold tag:
Donald, I am actually wondering about Richard’s style again lately too (”word salad), I had to really force myself to not not point it out lately. His main problem seems pressure or too fast responses. I’d really like to know the difference between the relatively clear RW and the grammatically and stylistically distorted one. Is it connected to context, as I early wondered?
The publication of talking points is an effort to dismiss, rather than an effort to justice, which requires reconciliation.
If you look at the first two paragraphs he actually condemns the use of talking points. That’s his self-perception. If no one tells him what to think about it, so he must a politically correct moderate and obviously only the other side are “fascists”. (the idea of decades of rigid conventions, conventions he keeps up, would of course complicate matters)
Is calling someone a fascist according to RW to “calmly and relatively articulately” describing his perspective too? He didn’t use it here more frequently again not long ago. What this reminded me of were early encounters with the orthodox organized left in the early seventies. Fascist was a term that needed no definition, but was constantly thrown into the discourse by true believers that felt their respective “bibles” challenged.
The fear of revenge –your word salad– indicates that beneath his “calm and articulate” argument there is a realization of wrongs done. Wrongs of course that have to be kept under the carpet by continuation along the same rigid Iron Wall road like Lebanon, and lately Gaza. Are people that challenged the wisdom of the Gaza war fascists too?
If no one tells him what to think about matters, he must be a moderate and not a partisan, and only whoever thinks differently must be a “fascists”.
“calmly and articulately”
Like The Magnus Zionist?
“I actually consider myself an independant (sic) thinker”
And a very independent speller, too! Me I’d call you indepedant, but YMMV.
RE Witty: “The publication of talking points is an effort to dismiss, rather than an effort to justice, which requires reconciliation.”
The hasbara handouts and how the anti-divestment speakers stuck to that hasbara plan:
link to mondoweiss.net
I agree with Cliff: “Ignore Dick Witty’s obfuscation and just read the plain truth. Straight from the Zionist’s mouth.”
Fascist in two respects:
1. Scapegoating Israel and secondarily Jewish sympathizers with Israel.
2. Enforcing conformity to politically correct approaches. The sequence, tone and frequency of abusive responses those with liberal views, that are sympathetic to Palestinians’ experience, indicates that the potshots are more important to dissenters than the reforms themselves.
Witty canards:
1) Targeting elements of Israeli apartheid and occupation is an attack on Jews everywhere, and is therefore “anti-Semitism”
2) Demanding that Palestinian rights and security be regarded with the same priority as Israeli rights and security represents “conformity” to the above.
Seriously, you think you can clip out “anti-Semitism” and plunk in the word “fascism” and people are going to buy this shit? It’s the same hollow rhetoric with a bad boob job.
“Or when the next pendulum swing creates a different set of abusive powers that be?”
Yup, yup! Funny ain’t it, all it takes is a slight change in the mood in America, and Israel goes from America’s darling to a criminal regime.
C’mon, Witty, you should know better than to depend on a shabbes Goy!
Hey, but that’s the way it goes when you’re out there in the sovereign-state biz. It’s rough, baby.
But it’s not as if there weren’t plenty of examples for you! Look at China, or Japan, or Russia, or Germany. One day, inseparable pals, or at least on good terms, the next day, at daggers drawn. It’s hard to keep up.
“”I actually consider myself an independant thinker.”‘
So do most ideologues who are brainwashed.
“Again, there is justice that oriented towards vengeance for the past (its an affront to justice actually). .”‘
Accountabilty, whcih you fear so much, does not mean vengeance .
I am far from an ideolog.
Your proposed form of “accountability” is more vengeance than healing, at least to the extent that I understand.
How is your proposal humane to all parties? To what extent will you commit to put your body and voice on the line to ensure that it remains humane?
What, as “humane” as the Zionist contingency you support? We will take our chances.
Another dismissal rather than a model that some can find an angle to trust.
Nothing moves forward by that.
Its been that way for decades. Oslo was a hope that the militants, the ideologs, the purists on both sides sought to hinder.
And two groups of political opportunists slipped in, Hamas and the settler movement. While they hate each other vehemently, they dance together in their preference for struggle over order, and in their opportunism for control of their small pond.
And, civilians, moderates lose.
“And two groups of political opportunists slipped in, Hamas and the settler movement.”
The two groups did not “slip in,” however you always try to slip in nonsense with your “contributions” here, being historically and presently inaccurate (or lying) does nobody any good RW. Both Hamas and the settlers appeared (slipped in) by blatant Israeli settler state activity. Hamas was the creation of Israel in order to route Arafat and the earlier Palestinian movement for independence (now, do you want me to unpack this for you?).
The settlers “slipped in” by Israel’s own expansionist and occupation policy after 67′. There are plenty of official documents, long history, and unmistakable evidential activity to show this beyond a shadow of a doubt.
Therefore, it does no good to portray these groups as “accidents” or as sneakily “slipping in.” The official activities of Israel, the stronger – predominant state of colonial birth and continuing murderous colonial process is responsible in the main for everything. You RW, again (unremittingly and constantly) have clouded the history and the current issues in the present debacle, all in your attempts to pardon Israel, have mercy on Israel, avoid “maximalist” views, be “moderate” and “peace loving,” as the murderous settler state marches on not only with your support but that of Western hegemony’s. When will you come to the conclusion that you have arisen from this debate as an obvious – no holds barred – supporter of everything Israel does, on purpose or by default? I do not think you will EVER come to this conclusion, because the only person who can act and say the things that you do, in the face of repeated facts is the perfect replica of the liberal/conservative Israel, the left/right Israel, the this/that party Israel (we believe that there are these differences as much as there are differences between those in the two-party/one party charade in the USA), all while all support the occupation and the slow genocide of the Palestinian people.
They both pursued political opportunism and cruelty to gain street credibility at a time when their political presence was marginal except for their gruesome actions.
You say the same things about Fayyad, who actually is accomplishing the development of the Palestinian state. I support Fayyad’s effort.
You might state, “I disagree with the political path that you have chosen to encourage, and for the following reasons”.
Instead you ridicule and yell rather than describe within a context of some supporting and some conflicting history. You imagine that your narrative is the only component of reality, the only causal relationship, the only power that exists.
They weren’t accidents, they were intentional opportunism. Multiple dancers, more complex than to accurately paint one as wrong or as monolithic.
You think that Hamas terror in the 90′s – 06 was benign, productive, kind, progressive?
Or, opportunistic, disruptive as I do?
Where does the violence come from? Who is responsible for starting cycles of violence anew? Let’s review.
link to huffingtonpost.com
Cycles of violence are escalated. That is the meaning of the term “cycle”. There is no starting point.
It is a CHOICE to deescalate, or a choice to escalate, a relative choice in the force in the pendulum swinging.
If you think that escalation of conflict is a good in the world, then we live in different moral universes.
Oh, bullshit. If we start talking about 1948 abruptly you’ll about face and say “The Arabs started it.”
You’re a racist, Witty. Plain and simple. When it’s Jews, you exonerate them carte blanche. When it’s Palestinians, you condemn them unequivocally.
You are predicting.
When you say “if we start talking about 1948″, do you regard that as a conflict, or as an oppression?
A war between mutually offending parties, or merely a colonial enterprise?
“A war between mutually offending parties.” The Zionist movement had massive funding and illegally imported a significant stockpile of military armament (ironically, no small portion of it Nazi surplus).
Did the Palestinians have an army? Did the Palestinians have access to some of the cream of the weapons of war, as the Zionists had? I think it’s pretty damning, Witty, when an almost exclusively European population comprising barely a third of the residents of a region manage to expunge half of the existing native population in less than a year.
And I’m not predicting. That’s exactly what you’ve said in the past. You insisted the Palestinians were engaging in a mass ethnic cleansing against the Jews. Not only is there no such evidence of that, but there’s very clear evidence of THE OPPOSITE — that Zionist planned for quite a while, and successfully executed, a massive ethnic cleansing of the non-white population.
You don’t believe that the slogan “drive them into the sea” that was promoted in 36-39, 47 and 48 by the invading Arab Legion, was mutually offending?
You do know what the term mutual means? It does mean Israel as entirely innocent. It describes conflict between two or more groups each making some effort. To describe the Zionist effort as colonial is accurate in ways. It was an effort to establish a home, a viable, safe, self-governing, state.
To describe it as solely expropriative is to misrepresent.
The present is similar in that there is a lack of sympathy with the other, and permission to mutual hostility.
Its time to change that, to renounce hostility to the other. To actually stop it, and that takes accomplishing from all parties.
FIVE HUNDRED PALESTINIAN VILLAGES, Witty. You don’t get that? You don’t care? Five hundred. Literally half of the population of Palestine, excluding the European colonists.
That is who was driven into the sea, Witty.
You keep using language of who “started it”. I guess you do not see the cycle of escalation as a cycle, as a relationship.
But, that is the most accurate description of the process, a dialectic in which one “effort” causes or facilitates a reaction with a slight change in setting, which causes or facilitates a reaction with a slightly new change in setting.
With the intention for reconciliation, as distinct from the intention for blame only, the swings in the cycle (the pendulum) can be lessened, so that mutual co-existence and even mutual aid, can replace mutual hostility.
It requires recognition of wrongs from both communities, from all if there are more than two.
And, if solidarity is interested in improving lives, the best that it can do is to act to relax the pendulum swings, to DE-ESCALATE, rather than escalate.
Yeah, and I guess you don’t fucking under stand how basic CAUSE AND EFFECT works.
link to huffingtonpost.com
That is fact, Witty. Not opinion, not bloviation, not propaganda… that is hard, statistical, proven fact.
Israel commits the crime, then that means Palestinians are definably reacting in self defense.
And, what of the present?
The present is the only thing that I can influence. I cannot influence the past.
And, in the present the work to accomplish is to stop the settlement expansion, to build Palestinian institutions, to elect governance in Israel that is capable of restraining settlement growth and assertively reconciling, and to elect Palestinian governance that is capable of reconciliation.
Otherwise there is only war.
Mutual wrongs occurred. Mutual attempted and realized atrocities.
The point is to stop the next one.
The Palestinians have built their institutions five times over, already. Each time they build something, Israel bombs it. Or steals it. Or asks an ally to destroy it for them. Or wages systematic campaigns of assassination and mass internment into prison camps.
Until you acknowledge those crimes — until you acknowledge that Israel has destroyed Palestinian statehood over and over and over again — until you recognize that Zionism has resulted in the destruction of Palestinian democracy, repeatedly, over and over again… your words are hollow and meaningless, and you are nothing more than a collaborator in crimes against humanity.
Those are crimes that are going on RIGHT NOW. You aren’t merely denying something historical, Witty, you are actively complicit in an ongoing criminal activity.
That is an interpretation. Surely you acknowledge that there are different interpretations floated.
I am trying to urge the determination to reconcile. And, that can only be built on calm, not on agitation.
If you are successful in stimulating the anger of Palestinian solidarity to harm Israelis for example, not giving them the encouragement of “the world is watching, you are not forgotten”, but the encouragement of “stick it to those Israelis, they’ve got it coming”, then that outcome will be a bad one.
Escalation will have occurred, not liberation and not reconciliation. Israel will respond in kind, perhaps fifty times in-kind.
And, neither side will count, “I was wronged 6 times. I’m done.”
Yakov will state “they killed my mother”. Joshua will state “they killed my brother”, each demanding accountability, multiplying. And Abdullah will state, “they killed my friend”, and Ahmed will state “they killed my grandfather”. And, Shlomo in Brooklyn will fund a group in solidarity to kill, and Muhammed in Yemen will fund and arm a group in solidarity to kill.
All, for the failure to recognize that the harms ARE mutual, and the we feed them in ways, and that is better to relax the harms, rather than encourage them.
All for the failure to recognize the cycle, that we and they contribute to it, not just they and not just we.
You know what, Witty? And when Israel starts the next round of bloodletting and rampant carnage, and when thousands more Palestinians lie dead on the ground with Israelis dancing and cheering over their corpses and drawing up plans for more Jewish-only communities? That blood is going to be on your hands. And your children will have to bear the mark of that shame, too.
Like I said before — I hope you live long enough to attend the war crimes trials of your children at the Hague. Because I already know you can’t give two shits about how many Palestinians die while you shill for your little Jewish empire.
That is your interpretation. There are other MUCH MORE effective ways to realize good in the region than by solidarity with one side, and verbal assault on the other.
I recommend efforts that humanize the other, that create a sense of conflict in MASSES of people’s minds about being willing to harm the other. In response to insult and agitation, the oppossite occurs, people’s native compassion is covered in reaction.
Those of us that are smart enough to restrain our reaction, then reduce the cycle of escalation, reduce the stimulus to abuse.
Nutcases do “extreme” actions and believe that they are “making history”, but they are in almost all cases making the world much much worse than better by any transformation.
Some day, Witty, the rest of Judaism is going to have to disown Zionist vultures like you, the same way Germany had to disown its Nazi past.
Israelis kill first. Israelis kill first. They kill first. You can’t change the course of time. When there is a pause in the death, that death is virtually always interrupted by an Israeli murdering a Palestinian.
You keep denying that, you bloodthirsty racist.
Lighten up on the wrath invocation.
Reluctance to judge (noting that judging adds to escalation) is not the same as complicity.
There are other ways that I and other individuals act to attempt to reduce the harms to Palestinians.
And, most importantly is that there are other ways that individuals could act, that don’t involve punitive approaches that are nearly inevitably escalative.
“Lighten up.”
You know what? You look through each and every one of these photos and then you tell me to “lighten up” again, huh?
link to normanfinkelstein.com
And, that is a tone that will motivate me in some way to do what you consider good, calling me a vulture.
There is no humane way that a Jew can adopt the view that current Israel is a parasite on the planet and needs to be purged. Israelis are human beings.
What is needed is transformation of attitudes and transformation of policies.
Constructive criticism will contribute to that change in attitude and policy. Ranting and calling people vultures will nearly certainly have the opposite effect.
I’ve been through this, so your ranting will not convince me to be a “Israel is right in all cases” Zionist. My backbone for humanity, and for Israel is strong than that.
Others though might. People need education much much more than mobilization. You do as well.
I get that you are stimulated by photos to sympathy and to anger.
Be wary of requiring that.
The exact same phenomena is paraded among victims of terror attacks. It stimulates people’s reptilian rages, the unconscious permission to lash out.
When in fact, we are also mammalian (caring and social, familial, tribal if you will) and we are also human (caring and intelligent, present, insightful, creative).
Fuck you. If you can look photos of children murdered and not feel a goddamned thing, that you can still defend it, Witty, then you’re the closest thing to a monster I will ever meet. You are the closest analog to a Nazi I will ever face, and I think understand now what it was that drove my poor German-American WW2 veteran grandfather to spend so many of his waking hours drinking the memory away.
And you should be grateful that you will never have to look at a photo of a charred corpse and see your child in it.
I can’t. Knowing that there are similar photos in both communities, I choose to not stimulate wrath and rage, instead choose to stimulate thought and reconciliation.
You do know that rage is an addiction, yours and Zionists.
I call those photos Pavlovian when they are paraded the eighteenth time, not to dismiss them, but to gain control over my intentions.
Its very similar to the photos of the holocaust. They invoke traumatic response feelings. If that educates you, they are important. If they motivate you to rage repeatedly, they addict you.
There are photos of the Holocaust in there too. Are you so jaded and uncaring that you disregarded them too?
You didn’t even look at them, did you?
“And you should be grateful that you will never have to look at a photo of a charred corpse and see your child in it.”
I seek to avoid that in everyone.
Personally, as my son is conpicuously Jewish, I am very concerned about invocations to anti-semitism.
We’ve been here in the same room for a long time. I would hope that even though we differ, that you would feel enough compassion for me to value my concern that violence not be unleashed in the world that he could be victim to.
I agree that it is important to similarly act to protect Palestinians children, and I welcome productive recommendations how to do that.
Fifty Palestinians have died for every Israeli, Witty. At minimum.
You want your child to be safe? You want Palestinians to be safe? Give up Zionism and start acting like an American citizen.
No, I didn’t.
I don’t seek out pictures of Palestinian burned children, nor of Jewish.
As usual, you make all your comments from a position of extreme ignorance and idiocy. Hell, why should I be surprised, by now? How many times have we seen you instinctively assault non-Zionist Jews without even bothering to actually read what they’ve written?
I will speak for humane Zionism continually.
I will not suicide to appease.
You are stretching Chaos.
I don’t assault anyone frankly.
Suicide was perhaps too strong a word.
But you will condone ethnic cleansing and military actions against civilian populations, huh.
That’s what makes you a monster, Witty. You hyperbolize your profit with your survival and there for make the former more important to you than the survival of others.
You’re not in any goddamn existential threat. You live in the United fucking States! You are part of a 2% minority that is represented on 14 Senate seats — compare and contrast that with the 14% minority of African Americans who only see one single seat.
That’s not enough for you? Can’t get enough lording over “brown people” here at home that you have to legitimize their persecution in Israel?
I condone reconciliation between people that have formerly mutually harmed one another.
Mutual humanization.
There are other ways that I and other individuals act to attempt to reduce the harms to Palestinians.
Like supporting the Gaza war?
Is Gaza last February (1400 massacred) and the Lebanon war before that not “present” enough for you?
You have a massive blind spot.
that I and other individuals act to attempt to reduce the harms to Palestinians.”
Witty
————–
Act to attempt to reduce ?!! You mean you and other individuals TRY to reduce the Palestinians’ suffering?
You have a massive blind spot.
Polly
————–
What bothers me here is his massive problem with the English language..
The cycle of abuse applies to situations involving a pattern of
one-sided power. As Truman noted in his diary regarding the zionists, the underdog has become the overdog, to the nines!
Are you willing to share Jerusalem with the other two faiths? I think that’s the most humane to all parties. Why do you insist on it being an exclusively
Jewish controlled city?
In what setting are speaking?
If you are speaking about me personally, you are lying in describing me advocating for an exclusively controlled city.
I guess that is convenient for you, to paint every Zionist as enemy.
I guess that is convenient for you, to paint every Zionist as enemy.
Witty
Some Zionists are pushing for peace, others are actively destroying the Palestinians.
Neither painting them as the enemy is accurate, neither the friend.
We need to get rid of this “neither,” and advocate peace from all Zionists.
Just as it is inaccurate to paint them as one group, so it is inaccurate to claim that others do so.
The rebuking and pigeonholing approach, Witty, is a maximalist one. It destroys debate, instead of encouraging it.
So, model the alternative.
Avoid your compulsion to ridicule me or others, and discourage it among your cadre here.
My “attacks” are extremely limited and substantive.
For one thing, we should view the debate at Berkeley as a positive move.
Both sides were accorded the platform to voice their views. Both sides debated. Great points were made. There was a strong effort to propagandize one side (as evidenced by the distribution of talking points), and many signs that the anti-camp accorded to them in many cases. But they should still be allowed to make their case, and they did.
Regardless of whose side had more validity, we should encourage debate.
Your approach of rebuking one side, by calling it propaganda, is destructive. It shuns debate instead of allowing it to flourish. It’s the maximalist approach, when the Berkeley approach was one of mutual debate, mutual dialogue, mutual understanding.
uhhh… you sound like Witty. a bunch of words and no substance. You are usually more articulate, no offense.
Here, no one saw multiple perspectives.
Wittypocrisy, weren’t you the guy who’s been trying to declare BDS as “fascistic?” You’re about as even handed as Captain Hook.
Debate is good. Lets see it.
Lets see the individuals that were ranting, and the people that were speaking kindly. Lets see the basis for Jewish students fears (not in the “we’ve got them on the run” victory lap theme of movements). Lets see the sensitivity to the other so that a pendulum swing form of justice can be avoided in favor of an intentionally and mutually respectfully designed justice.
Successful BDS is a shunning, partially based on ethnic lines.
In that sense, if successful, it will be fascistic. After the occupation ends, we will have to deal with the residue of the hatred born of careless and opportunistic activism.
And, most likely, you or the other proponents won’t be around to clean that part up, in the effort to protect yourself from some guilt of causing hatred and “justice” rather than causing reconciliation and real justice.
If there are less punitive ways to accomplish justice, they should be chosen.
When dissent becomes punitive, the fascists (left and right) come out of the woodwork to “succeed”.
I think the relevant Jewish student fear, Witty, was the Jewish student senator who described how she was getting the “Goldstone treatment” from her fellow Jews.
How come Zionism always revolves around excluding people?
Goddammit, Witty, do you even know what the hell “fascism” really is? I’m sick and tired of you throwing around buzz words when you obviously haven’t got a freakin’ clue what the word ACTUALLY means.
That fear should be on the table, as should the similar Jewish students’ fears of group abuses, say at Hampshire College (where I met students who felt compelled to go elsewhere for the hateful tone on the college).
In the film, one student said in some wording, “this debate is not insensitive, not threatening in fact”. But, as you state, individuals did feel threatened, did feel that they were entering a setting of verbal violence and even the prospect of organized harrassment.
What do you think it means?
I think the imaginary fears put on by a bunch of AIPAC sponsored opportunists gets trumped by the actual fears of morally upright Jews who are facing emotional (and literal) blackmail from aggressive Zionists.
We’ve already watched how you, eee and yonira treat dissent here, Witty. We’ve already watched how the three of you work together to assault and shame specific Jews (Phil Weiss for instance) in a cynical attempt to force them to back down and get in line behind you.
Maybe some of the fears were “imaginary”.
I think that is a lame dismissal. I’ve spoken to Jewish students at Hampshire that were traumatized by being called murderers at their home/school.
I treat discussion very respectfully. I treat tirades that make no path for different views less respectfully. I treat name-calling far less respectfully.
“Work together to assault”. I don’t believe that I’ve assaulted anyone in my time here. There have been only a couple instances that I’ve gotten angry.
As I believe my proposed approach to dissent is more effective and kinder than agitation, I will continue to speak up and express my reasoning.
“After the occupation ends, we will have to deal with the residue of the hatred born of careless and opportunistic activism.”
That’s a valid fear–people who use excessive rhetoric on any side of a conflict, even if the cause is just, can create new problems. I do see this sometimes on the pro-Palestinian side. But you never see how your own faction generates hatred–the smug complacency of self-infatuated “liberal” Israelis who thought the Gaza massacre was justified, at least initially, when Hamas’s requirement that the blockade be lifted was entirely just. Or the complacency of a person who still can’t admit the deliberate ethnic cleansing that was an inherent part of the process that made pre-67 Israel a Jewish democracy. The inability to be honest about the sins of one’s chosen side is a huge factor in creating bitterness. The death and oppression that has occurred up to this point is the direct result of actions of people with your beliefs.
RW: My “attacks” are extremely limited and substantive.
Substance would start with defining ones terms. The use of fascist startled me too. “Cadre” = right/left “posse”. Extremely limited and substantive.
Interesting:
After the occupation ends, we will have to deal with the residue of the hatred born of careless and opportunistic activism.
So ultimately hatred is born out of solidarity with the suppressed not from decades of humiliation and suppression?
Interesting:
After the occupation ends, we will have to deal with the residue of the hatred born of careless and opportunistic activism.
So ultimately hatred is born out of solidarity with the suppressed not from decades of humiliation and suppression?
In what sense would solidarity with the suppressed and robbed be opportunistic?
Successful BDS is a shunning, partially based on ethnic lines.
Ethnicity doesn’t play a big role in Facism. It doesn’t seem to be part of the fascist minimum or core. But it is generally agreed that it of central significance in Nazism. For the Nazis race, their pseudo-religion, is at least as important as their antagonism against communism. That may well be connected to the rather late German nation. During the time of the rise of German antisemitism there was also much suspicion against the mainly southern Catholics from a Protestant Prussian perspective.
Are you in fact using “fascists” for BDS supporters since you shun the term Nazi?
*******************************************************
In that sense, if successful, it will be fascistic. After the occupation ends, we will have to deal with the residue of the hatred born of careless and opportunistic activism.
So success defines facism? If BDS would succeed in forcing Israel to end occupation, that success would be fascist?
Fascism is everything that would force Israel to give up it’s strategic advantage? Since that is needed to defend it’s Jewish natives and settlers? Anything else would be “suicidal”?
Suicidal only due to the “opportunistic” activism of concerned citizen?
****************************************************
” I’ve spoken to Jewish students at Hampshire that were traumatized by being called murderers at their home/school.”
What nonsense! “Traumatised”? Bullshit! If they join up with chabad and go live on a settlement, all that trauma will disappear, and they will fulfill their Jewish destiny. If it’s good enough for your son, Richard, it’s good enough for them.
If you want to see a successful shunning, check out AIPAC’s modus operandi. A recent shunning event less successful was the organized attempt
to prevent Goldstone from attending his grandson’s bar mitzvah.
And, of course, the BDS movement against apartheid S Africa was a very successful shunning.
Chaos ~ it’s time to start ignoring RW.
If he were interested in bringing about positive change in Israel he’d be on a zionist or settler forum page trying to soften those hardened hearts – but he isn’t.
His purpose is to interrupt and prevent meaningful dialogue. It’s classic passive/aggressive behaviour, I imagine coming from his frustration that the Palestinian story is at last being told.
Don’t waste your energy.
You don’t have a clue what I do, Sumud.
My purpose is to propose effective strategy, rather than the cul-de-sac and harming strategy of solidarity motivated by ideology rather than mutual compassion.
Richard, I asked you this below, but you never answered, so I ask again in the context of your mentioning “effective strategy.”
Are you actually suggesting that Jewish Israelis must be convinced of the HUMANITY OF THE PEOPLE OF PALESTINE? The sons and daughters of the holocaust have to be persuaded of the humanity of another group of human beings?
Perhaps 40+ years of occupying Palestine has already destroyed the humanity of the people of Israel.
I think it’s beyond obscene that you place the responsibility of this on the backs of the people Israel has oppressed, humiliated, murdered, jailed and denied for 40+ years to remedy this.
Should Jews in Germany in the 1930s have had to convince the Nazis that there were human beings too?
Richard, I asked you this and a few other questions below, but you did not answer, so I ask again in the context of your mentioning “effective strategy.”
Is your strategy predicated on Palestinian people persuading Israeli Jews and their Jewish supporters that they are fully human?
Sorry for the dupe. The editor said that first post was already written and couldn’t be posted again!
I’ve answered every question that you posed respectfully, that I saw Judy.
As I’ve commented before, a mutual conflict can only be resolved by mutual self-inquiry and conciliation.
And, as I’ve said before, self-inquiry that results in one’s sincere remorse at one’s own actions is at worse self-knowledge, which is itself empowering to self-control. It might not be empowering to winning a victory in war.
So, it depends on what your or Palestinians’ goal is. If their goal is improvement in their lives then self-inquiry to the extent that their actions contributed to animosity and war and suffering can only help them. If their goal is victory in war, then propaganda is necessary.
But, for an idealist liberal western supporter, that is a quandry, to willingly self-delude and to delude others for the purposes of winning a war, even a “war of ideas”.
The same holds true for Israel. For Israelis to understand that their actions have contributed to others suffering is an empowerment, an increased ability to affect the outcome of their actions for good in the world, even if it suggests apologies.
Conflict is the story. Cynical one-sided and one-dimensional oppression is a misrepresentation of the events.
Among educated people, people actually with memory and knoweldgable of history and intention to honestly research, there is no possibility for forging a mass movement on the basis of the assertion that the relationship between Israel and Palestine is only of oppression.
People aren’t that dumb. And, like the people that felt duped by ingesting only pro-Israeli mythology got angry when they found that that was a half truth, the same will occur relative to Palestinian solidarity.
Better to avoid that, to realize a mutually good outcome.
If you really believed that, you wouldn’t be advocating to let Jewish Israelis keep even one inch of the land they stole from Palestinians in 1967, let alone your horrendous exoneration of Israel for razing 500 Palestinian villages in 1948.
I don’t propose a second wrong to “right” a first one, especially where the proposed expropriation of houses, farms, businesses exceeds the market value of the original land.
I think you know how easily it would be to manipulate you Chaos. Because of your knee-jerk, “every word from a Zionist’s mouth is wrong”, you will and have made comments that are directly in opposition to Palestinians’ interest, current and otherwise.
I’m not that dishonest that I would seek to manipulate you in that way, but it would be very easy to, because you don’t consider others presentations in any analytic manner, identifying what you support as distinct from what you oppose.
LOL! Yeah, can’t cheat the thieves out of their earned equity and interest, huh.
Kudos for managing to subtly work in your racist “white man’s burden” rhetoric under the radar. “Well, Jews have been making that desert land bloom since they took possession of it, so now it’s worth more than the Palestinians are owed as compensation.”
Thank you again, Witty, for exposing what an atavistic throwback to European colonialism that Zionism really is.
Richard, what you are saying is gibberish.
You do nothing but avoid the central issue.
I ask if you are able to recognize the power differential. You don’t answer.
I ask if Palestinians are required to convince the descendants of the Holocaust that they are human beings. You don’t answer.
I ask if you are able to recognize ongoing rapacious settlement as the single biggest factor that makes the 2-state solution that you claim to support impossible. You don’t answer.
I ask, if the majority on both sides want 2 states, why does the settlement machine churn on? What factors make that happen? You don’t answer.
Through 40 years, Israel has demonstrated every day, with facts on the ground, that it has NO INTEREST in ceding land or providing rights. If you want the Palestinians to begin to trust, wouldn’t the first logical step to offer a sliver of hope that Israel might actually be interested in giving back land? Why don’t we hear you calling for the cessation of all settlement activity?
Your “mutual understanding” model amounts to never-ending settlement and a gradual worsening of the status quo.
Again, it’s the position of “liberal Zionists” like Richard, even more than the extremists like Bibi, that drive me to support BDS and to make Israel an international pariah.
Really, there is no other hope.
The settlement machine churning on isn’t the problem
As a first step we need to pour more hot coals into the settlement machine and really get it into high gear!
Hungry for more lebensraum, huh?
“I am far from an ideolog” (sic)
I-d-e-o-l-o-g-u-e, Richard, ideologue.
Hey, maybe he meant “idea log.” As in rhetorical deadfall.
“‘I am far from an ideolog.”
That’s what ideologues and extremists believe.
“Your proposed form of “accountability” is more vengeance than healing, at least to the extent that I understand.”
That’s because like all Zionists, you regard accountability and the rule fo as a threat to Israel.
“How is your proposal humane to all parties?”
You’re not concerned with what is humane, you’re concerned with the feelings of Israelis. As humane solution will not necessarily make Israelis happy.
I don’t think Witty is an ideologue. He is in fact a liberal Zionist.
He simply demonstrates how fundamentally racist and morally bankrupt that POV is.
The center of their position is that any real pressure on Israel is wrong. It’s up to the Palestinian victims of their decades of murder, land theft, mass imprisonment, curfew, restricted movement and daily humiliations to dance to the right tune to convince Jewish Israelis that they deserve to be treated like human beings. Then, and only maybe then, will enough Israelis see the light that something (but we don’t know what) will end the “temporary” situation.
I
Correction: It is Jewish land and therefore not land theft .
“I am far from an ideolog.”
I agree. Too bad you’re an ideologue. That’s (ready now?): I-D-E-O-L-O-G-U-E.
Pingback: Porque esta Luis Miguel en el hospital? | Art 188 News
Pingback: UC Berkeley Divestment Bill round-up: the emotions of it all « jew on this
I must admit to being relieved to see that Ackerman is also appalled at the S African temple’s attempt to shun Goldstone. My only experience with organized Judaism is through a few reform temples in the US, but I had never seen that loyalty to Israel was a requirement for active participation. If that were to happen, it would be very unfortunate. A schism along those lines would make it very difficult to move the American people towards a more even handed position towards granting the Palestinian people their rights.
Witty, as a self-described moderate, how do you see change coming about?
Who are the moderates of whom you speak? You paint the conflict as though it’s between Hamas and settlers. Illegal colonization of the West Bank and Gaza has been ongoing since 1967, but every single elected gov’t of Israel. 85% of the Israeli population supported the slaughter of Gazans last year. Which “moderates” are you talking about in Israel?
The PA just named a street after the Engineer in Ramallah. Salam Fayyad has no popular support whatsoever. Which “moderates” are you talking about in Palestine?
Let’s forget about the use of the term “moderates” in this context. It is meaningless.
From my less than academic perspective, this conflict is driven by the Israeli government occupation machine, which continues to implement the unjust laws in the WB, and the unconscionable siege in Gaza. The settlement machine churns on and on and on. Netanyahu’s policies are not substantively different than Olmert’s, or Sharon’s.
Do you honestly believe that by “being good,” Palestinians can stop this machine by behaving in the way it is structured to behave? Will Israeli citizens wake up one day and say, “Hey! The arabs have been good lately! Let’s give them a chance! Let’s vote in a government that is truly committed to peace!”
By and large, Israel is quite comfy with the status quo. The only way to bring movement is to force it, to make the continuation of the status quo more painful than change would be.
There are 2 ways to bring about that pain. Violence or nonviolent BDS. You reject both.
How do you see change coming about?
If you conclude, “Let’s forget about the use of the term “moderates” in this context. It is meaningless.”, then you aren’t in fact asking.
I see change only possible by persuasion. And, the primary persuasion necessary is to humanize the other.
For Arabs to respectfully study and appreciate modern Jewish history, including of post-1948 Zionism seeking to understand the gamut of miscommunications that led to mutual hostility rather than communication and problem-solving.
For Israelis to acknowledge that there was a preceeding Arab culture, and honor that culture (as patronizing as that sounds). To also understand the history of the Arab peoples, and specifically Palestinians, their hopes, needs, fears.
In that way, moderates can be elected. Or even for those that advocate a single-state, a common civilist (not nationalist) party can be formed to run in elections in Israel and in Palestine. It would be useful if that party did not adopt a single-state as its platform, but civil integrated democracy solely.
Those that publicly advocate for a single state, but still retain a fundamentally nationalist orientation, leave fundamental ambiguity of their actual intentions. I expect that it is dangerous for Palestinian advocates to support integration and full civil and legal rights for Jews in Palestine, so it would take unusual determination and courage to actually work for that.
Maybe that is why so many still adopt the BDS South Africa model of civilist dissent as the path rather than the actual grassroots approach of integration. That is that they are scared, both of failure and of harm. Both are rational fears, but BDS (especially cultural and academic) isolates rather than integrates.
In healing addictions or violent intimate relations, one primary recognition is “I contributed to the conflict. My actions, my words. Is that what I intended, to harm this person or myself.”
If this is to reconciled at all, both Israelis and Palestinians have to do that acknowledgement, because it is true and constructs the current knot, whether you would otherwise be inclined to that recognition or not.
Another reality of addiction recovery, is that even if one does that acknowledgement and the other doesn’t, the person doing the acknowledgement is better off. That description creates a no lose situation for self-reflection.
But, self-reflection is not the same as groveling in a state of walking apology, shame for one’s existence, one’s experience.
What changes is one’s expression, one’s proposals, one’s willingness to listen to the other. One’s own experience is their own, not destroyed by the process, but enriched, even the pain, even the traumas.
“My children were killed. I killed back. I realized that that cycle had to stop, that I do NOT wish it on the next generation even if I can justify my rage.”
Wow. You really see this conflict as equally shared responsibility.
I am speechless.
I suggest that rather than the “addiction” model of change, we employ the “sexual abuse victim” model of recovery.
And notice that for Richard, there are no “Palestinians” only “Arabs”
So the Palestinians are made responsible for whatever any “Arab” (as defined by Richard, of course) says about Jews.
That’s exactly like a guy who beats his wife for something his mother-in-law said.
Richard has, for all his phony “moderation” has never once, not once, written a comment to protest any of the extremely dehumanising and bigoted remarks by other Zionists.
But he’s quick to support (usually by a brief abstract sentence or two) the really obvious ziobots, which he did very recently on this blog–by joining in their unified attack on their single target, and ignoring the ziobot comments.
Witty says, “Another reality of addiction recovery, is that even if one does that acknowledgement and the other doesn’t, the person doing the acknowledgement is better off. That description creates a no lose situation for self-reflection.”
Would that the physician would heal himself of his ziocain addiction. Of course Mooser’s been trying to point this out to him for ages now via humor; others too, each in their own way–nothing has penetrated at all.
Judy, agreed.
First prioirty: stop the crime and protect the victim. Healing can only come later – to suggest healing can occur while the crime is still being actively perpetrated is absurd.
In effect RW advocates doing nothing. He advocates *we* do nothing. Dissent is not permitted either inside or outside Palestine for him.
Are you sure you want “the Arabs” to study and appreciate Jewish and Zionist history? They might find that Zionism is a racist ideology, European Jews who lead it and many of their followers were racists of malicious intent towards “the Arabs,” murderous and bent on stealing someone else’s land, property and heritage. Many intelligent, open-minded people, represented by those on this blog, have studied Jewish in particular Zionist history and come to such a conclusion.
Worse is the underlying assumption that if the widely ignorant “arabs” only knew better…
I’ll never forget the sight of my 6’2″, conservative Muslim brother-in-law weeping while watching Schindler’s List.
Did that knowledge make it easier to bear when his youngest brother came home from a night in Shin Bet detention with blood in his underwear?
Zionists like Witty are in denial of the true nature of Israel’s occupation. They just don’t get the horror, the humiliation, the way in which living under someone’s boot eats away at your soul.
“In healing addictions or violent intimate relations, one primary recognition is….”
That you’re a pretentious accountant, and not a psychologist, and don’t know a goddam thing about it?
And please, Witty, don’t even pretend you know anything about it. You allowed, hell, probably encouraged, your son to throw away his life over a very common incident of social anti-Semitism, just to satisfy your need for a persecution complex. Yeah, you know a whole lot about seeking moderate solutions and contributing to a problem. And self-reflection? ROTFLMS(kinny)JAO!!!
Witty I never would have known a thing about your son running to the chabadniks if you hadn’t tried to make some hay with it here. So can the complaints.
85% of the Israeli population supported the slaughter of Gazans last year.
Richard’s definition of moderates doesn’t contradict the support of Operation Cast Lead. Since Richard describes himself as moderate and strongly supported the Gaza war.
I’d love to see the poll that said “do you support the slaughter of Palestinians.”
85% percent of Israeli support a military response to the rockets, I don’t recall reading any polls that asked if they supported the ‘massacre of Palestinians”
Did Banned Media Report Foretell of Gaza War Crimes?
No, surely no poll would ask such a question. But in wars usually people die, I think that is something we all know. And if I remember correctly (Pew 2003 poll) Israel supported to 85% the war against Iraq/The War on Terrorism against Iraq. WMD? That was the highest support anywhere. I found it startling at the time. Remember: Based on what evidence?
The best response to the rockets was the Egyptian brokered cease-fire which was working very well in late ’08, nobody on either side killed for 3 or 4 months, no Hamas rockets and in October just 1 rocket and 1 mortar from splinter groups. Israel blew the cease-fire away on Nov 4 because they didn’t want to end the blockade, and needed to take revenge on somebody, anybody, after performing so dismally in Lebanon 2 years earlier. What a bunch of COWARDS for choosing a largely civilian population as victims.
Why is it that Israel are so threatened by Hamas demonstrated ability to be moderate?
Yonira, I thought you said you’re Mother was not Jewish? What are you here for, the fish?
I see it as a knot of mutual antagonisms that can only be resolved by untying.
Applying a punitive imagined interventionary approach, will tie the knot further and tighter, rather than allow reconciliation and closure.
The sexual abuse victim model is only useful where the two can be permanently separated. That is NOT the case with Israelis and Palestinians. Unless ethnic cleansing occurs, they will always be neighbors.
The fact that someone as intelligent as yourself still sees this as primarily a mutual conflict is deeply saddening and cause for pessimism. It suggests the the emotionality of Zionists will never allow them to see the conflict clearly.
That the perpetrators of decades of violence, land theft, mass jailings, murder, and daily humiliations see themselves as victims is mind boggline. This reality suggests that your proposed “mutual understanding as the way to peace” can never bear fruit.
Honestly, do you really believe that Palestinians aren’t aware of Jewish suffering in the past? Do you imagine they are ignorant?
But like the child who is abused by a father who was himself abused… at the end of the day, it’s beside the point. The abusive father MUST STOP ABUSING HIS CHILD, and he owes it to himself to become healthy.
Reardless of the father’s past, it is never the child’s fault.
If you lived in Jerusalem in the 90′s and early 00′s you would have a different view of the conflict.
Its at least complex, not simplistic as you portray.
So, you are saying that Palestinians are children?
Many Palestinians have never heard of the holocaust for example, or they’ve heard of it as a remote theory.
I agree with you that each abuser should unilaterally stop abusing, as I’ve said quite a few times.
Your language really resembles a domestic conflict, in which each party can only see that the other is the sole cause of events.
If Palestinians are children in the model that you present, and they shell and bomb innocents, then it supports the Israeli patronizing view that they need intervention.
The mediation approach is different than either.
“I agree with you that each abuser should unilaterally stop abusing, as I’ve said quite a few times.”
Well, no. You defend much of Israel’s violence and you excuse them on the grounds that they are traumatized. That “you think Palestinians are children” sounds like you plagiarized my criticism of you regarding Israelis. I agree that both sides are responsible for their own crimes. You don’t–you frequently defend Israeli crimes.
“Many Palestinians have never heard of the holocaust for example, or they’ve heard of it as a remote theory”
Shalom Mr. Palestinian, I’m a Jew. Hey listen, about 60 years ago a fanatic German government which lasted all of twenty years (maybe) killed a bunch of us, so you’ve got to give me your house. Oh, and it also excuses my awful manners, and anything else I want it to. You capiche that, Valentino?
Richard, if I read everything you ever said, I might think that was the dumbest. For Christs sake, I’m a Jew, lost relatives in the Holocaust, and I don’t think it excuses much about Zionism. I wouldn’t hope for too much more from the Palestinians.
Richard, quick! Go get the Mufti! “Calling the Mufti! Mr. Mufti, please come to the nearest blue-and-white Ziophone!”
Richard, I actually DID work in Jerusalem from 1995-1997 and lived in Ramallah then. I crossed the A-Ram checkpoint every single day. What are you suggesting I should have witnessed? I WAS THERE.
Let’s use this analogy: A priest rapes an altar boy. The altar boy stabs the priest during the rape.
Is that the best course of action for the altar boy? Probably not.
Does the boy have the right to defend himself? Absolutely.
Does the priest need to stop being a sexual predator? Absolutely.
Is it evil for priest to focus on the “wrong” self-defense to divert attention from his ongoing sexual crimes? Absolutely.
Witty, there are those who accuse one-staters of being dreamers. I submit that the real dreamers are “liberal” Zionists such as yourself, who believe that Palestians, through empathizing with the suffering of their oppressors, bring about change.
Lastly, I am not suggesting Palestinians are children; I am merely recognizing the very real power differential in the conflict that you and your fellow “liberal Zionists” refuse to acknowledge.
This is not a conflict between equals. Israel has the power in this.
Richard, one more thing: your solution of “mutual recognition” of suffering suggests that if Palestinians understood “correctly” and accepted their occupation “correctly” then it could go away.
At the core of this kind of thinking is that occupation is punishment. As long as the Palestinians are “bad” the punishment shall continue.
Do you regard occupation as punishment?
It might not go away if Palestinians thought in terms of “they did this to us AND we contributed to the conflict by doing this to them”.
Likely it would change significantly though.
And, as I said, that self-awareness is helpful regardless of whether it results in demands met.
It constructs a no-lose situation to self-inquire, to be one’s ethical best, rather than one’s best a rationalization only.
It is a cycle, a conflict, not accurately a one-way oppression.
I regard occupation as a temporary condition that requires work to redesign and actually change.
And, I observe the current Fatah leadership and Fayyad conducting that work.
I don’t know what Hamas is doing right now.
You really aren’t going to blame the Israelis for anything are you?
What about Israeli attacks on UN personnel and structures, Witty? Is the UN supposed to blame itself for that, too?
Wonderful, Witty. Because Israel is nothing but the occupation.
Of course that is false.
In 1968, Palestine had no jurisdiction. In 1987, there was an intifada advocating ultimately for the two-state solution, which Israelis slowly acknowledged as just. Then in 1993, there was the promise of reconciliation (later broken by both parties), and the struggle within both the Palestinian and Israeli communities to dissemble it.
Now, we have the opportunist flirtation with single-state led by Palestinian nationalists, urging cultural and academic isolation of Israel, in the name of freedom of expression no less and full democracy no less.
The only common theme, and of your last post chaos, is “we want you to not exist”.
Go away, go somewhere.
But reality is that Israel does exist, that Jewish Israelis are there and comprise a current majority of the land to the sea (though they are not pressing for elections immediately though they would control the land, instead deferring either to bantustan or respect for Palestinian desire to self-rule).
No one can maintain peace over a 49% minority that genuinely regards itself as separate. Its just an impossibility, not even a fantasy.
Witty… please answer these 2 questions:
1) can you please elaborate on what I was to have observed when I was in Jerusalem in the mid-90s? I was there, so I’d love to know what you’re talking about.
2) So Palestinians recognize Jewish suffering, and even acknowledge they have resisted badly. Then what? How does that change the structure of the occupation machine in the Israeli gov’t? How does this play out?
From people that I know that lived in Israel in that time, the period was a time of great hope followed by great fear and then great disappointment.
I had some friends that were liberal Zionists with peace now that were in Ramallah when the Oslo accords were signed, and there was great celebration and invitation to Israelis to celebrate together.
Critical extreme incidents broke into that including the Goldstein massacre, the Rabin assassination, the beginning of Hamas led suicide bombing attacks at civilians.
The fear generated a fearful electoral response. Slimy Netanyahu as prime minister.
Peace still pushed, even if reluctantly. Then the 11th hour hopes and grand disappointments of Taba, the Sharon bluster, and then the extremely violent second intifada.
I don’t see change happening in Israel by the political pressure of BDS. But, only primarily by resumption of reconciliation efforts.
Fayyad and Fatah is doing the multi-dimensional civil disobedience of not letting either Israel or Hamas deter him from building a functional state.
On your second question. It plays out by the information campaigns within Israel on the humanity of Palestinians, their experience, goals, needs, the confidence in the political institutions of the PA, adding up to election of moderate Israeli party eager to reconcile with moderate Palestine.
The absence of threat, constant verbal and violent threat, posed by Palestinian resistance, takes the argument out from the likud arsenal.
Currently, likud gets maybe 40% of its votes, because changeable voters currently decide that lightening up on defense/offense is literally dangerous. Thats why I described that Hamas elected likud in the last Israeli election.
Israeli political thinking and elections ARE important. Radicals like the obvious enemy compared to suspected. Those that actually seek to productively improve Palestinian conditions and lives, seek a party that is actually willing to consider their health a good for Israel, rather than the current which regarded a weak Palestine as necessary.
I was actually in Ramallah when the IDF left in December of 1995. There was celebration like you can’t imagine. I shared the hope for the future enough to move my young family there to build the new state.
Part of what we experienced I have described elsewhere on Mondoweiss, namely being pushed out by the law (recently discussed here) that said Gazans need special permission to be out of Gaza. After 2 years of watching the PA sell out the interests of Palestinians in order to build a crony network, ongoing oppression by the IDF, the assassination of Rabin and the rise of Hamas, we ended up being pushed out by the Israeli government. My husband was the perfect partner for peace — western educated, committed to the rule of law, expert in the needed area of development, experience living in a Western democracy. There was no place for him.
But Witty, are you actually suggesting that Jewish Israelis must be convinced of the HUMANITY OF THE PEOPLE OF PALESTINE? The sons of the holocaust have to be persuaded of the humanity of another group of human beings?
Perhaps 40+ years of occupying Palestine has already destroyed the humanity of the people of Israel.
I think it’s beyond obscene that you place the responsibility of this on the backs of the people Israel has oppressed, humiliated, murdered, jailed and denied for 40+ years to remedy this.
Should Jews in Germany in the 1930s have had to convince the Nazis that there were human beings too?
Sooner or later Israel will widely be labeled a pariah state, as it should be. The day will come when its academics, students, athletes and entertains are shunned, as they should be.
Only when the price of continuing this brutal status quo becomes too high will Israelis choose to discontinue their present course of action.
The more I dialog with liberal zionists, the more I am more convinced of the need for international BDS to achieve liberation for Palestine.
“The more I dialog with liberal zionists, the more I am more convinced of the need for international BDS to achieve liberation for Palestine.”
As well you should be Judy, there is no ostensible difference between so-called “liberal or conservative” etc. Some of the worse atrocities imaginable came from a so-called liberal and moderate rank, see Operation Cast Lead for reference. The worse forms of house demolition and settlement growth in classic illegal fashion came during “liberal” watch.
The labels in Israel are about as worthless as the ones in the USA, while the main forward thrust is always the same – war, bloodshed, more of the same. Nothing is what it seems, or its name implies, like here we have libertarians that opt for complete corporate tyranny – it is absolutely incredible. Here is an example of how ridiculous the definitive terrain is –
I’M A LIBERTARIAN
It is just complete nonsense, and the idea of any forward discussion with the likes of people like RW is like the step forward, two steps back – it leads to nowhere, and is a distraction while the weak and poor are killed with impunity. This is what these systems (USA, Israel) excel in, they are both sick jokes and each, Western Imperialism and Zionism need to be totally dismantled.
Habibi, Libertarians are very much against corporatism. I won’t go off topic to argue that point, but I will note that there are several items that should make Libertarians interesting to the good people on this board:
We do not allow the State to choose our friends and enemies for us.
We do not believe anyone should be compelled to finance something which is a violation of that person’s conscience.
We we would unconditionally end all US government foreign aid – it’s bad enough for us taxpayers to pay for our own crooks.
We have a generous and welcoming attitude to immigrants – Jews and Palestinians.
We are against foreign military and covert interventions.
We are against entanglements in foreign alliances.
We recognize property rights and do not recognize the right of eminent domain, particularly for the confiscation of property from one ethnicity for the settlement of another ethnicity.
We are against a religious test for citizenship.
So many nice reasons to consider Libertarians kindly. Apply BDS to Democrats and Republicans. Vote Libertarian.
Witty, I surely wish you’d ask my question above.
Since we’re getting all psychological, my own suspicion is that the need to castigate Palestinians for resisting clear oppression comes from a deep sense of collective shame for barely resisting Nazi tyranny.
Are Palestinians really required to apologize for fighting back?
Fayyad and Abbas can sign away the right to resist. And the majority of Palestinians won’t ever pick up so much as a stone again Israel, but there’s a street in Ramallah named after the Engineer.
If you entertain the idea that Palestinians will apologize for not submitting to Israel you are moderate or progressive. You are delusional.
‘Nuff said.
Make that “NOT” moderate or progressive, but delusional.
“I don’t see change happening in Israel by the political pressure of BDS. But, only primarily by resumption of reconciliation efforts.”
Reconcilliation always follows political settlement, and Israel have demo strated that they are unwilling to agree to a political settlement without pressure
BDS is a great avenue to achieve that. After all, whther BDS is imposed or not is entirely up to Israel.
“The only common theme, and of your last post chaos, is “we want you to not exist”.”
The only common theme, is that Israelk propagandists will always turn to this straw man when they have run out of talking points and have their back to the wall.
Defending the indefensible calls for desperate measures.
So the Palestinians contributed to the conflict, when, for example, the Haganah army came to their towns and villages (in what was then Palestinian land) and they fired at it. Whereas, the Haganah expulsion of those Palestinians they didn’t mass murder in villages that took some defensive action was unintentional. That some Palestinian villages took no defense and the people were expelled or massacred anyway has no bearing. Not only that, the Palestinians, those who were exiled and those who fought against the invading army, were simply misunderstanding Jewish history and Zionist intentions, thereby also contributing to the conflict.
I’m reminded of the old adage, “any excuse will do for a tyrant.” It’s manifestly evident that Israel, historically and presently, has used and will use any excuse to grab land and expel the Palestinians. Not only does any excuse do, but RW is busy trying to get the victims of tyranny make excuses for the tyrant as well, and decry any tactics used by the victims, however non-violent, as violent in intent and yet more excuse for Israel to continue the violence.
“I regard occupation as a temporary condition that requires work to redesign and actually change”
It’s not temporary given ghat it has run for 43 years and has vrcome Israeli policy. As Tzipi Livni explained, it is the foundation of Israeli strategic interests.
“I don’t know what Hamas is doing right now”
You’ve had this explained countless times. You simy refuse to aknowledge Hamas actions when they threaten to portray Hamas in a positive light, especially given that the Israeli leadership is now demonstrably more extreme and rejectionist by comparison.
Like I said homingpigeon, a complete divorce from present reality, and the foundation of where we find ourselves today. Amazing
A child does not have the economic or physical power of the abusive father. That fact is not complex at all. Yet you don’t go there, Witty.
Why?
20 years of faux-reconciliation efforts:
link to en.wikipedia.org
PS who can tell me what happened during 1982/3, settler population levelled then grew very fast for a while after, was it something to do with Lebanon war?
Oh, Sumud. The occupation is just “temporary!”
How many Israeli Jews and those who support them around the world share Witty’s beliefs… that this is a mutual conflict between mutually empowered parties who have wronged each other in mutual proportion.
How can one negotiate with delusion?
By understanding the reasoning behind it.
The Palestinian solidarity approach is similarly delusional, thinking only of its own story, as that were the sum total of the reality.
The Iron Wall approach is similarly delusional, thinking only of its own story, as that were the sum total of the reality.
As opposed to your insistence that is honoring Palestinian rights is unfeasible because it’s supposedly impossible to move millions of people around in a short time (like Israel did, with its no-questions-asked Jewish immigration policy and settlement construction activity on militarily occupied land in violation of the Geneva Conventions) and your belief that certain recent settlements cannot be removed (whereas erasing existing Palestinian villages that have been there for many generations is always an option).
Also, Witty, your “separate but equal” reasoning behind the faulty version of the two state solution you forward is not only delusional, it’s an affront to modern American society of the highest magnitude.
Were Jews in Germany required to understand why the Nazis hated them so? Were they required to try to fix that Nazi thinking? To behave in a way that such that Nazis would be able to see them in a new light, as human beings?
Neither Palestinians nor their supporters around the world can repair the devastating psychological effects of the Holocaust. Nor is it their responsibility. That doesn’t mean the world is required to allow Zionists to continue the cycle of abuse.
Witty, your posts make the strongest case of all for the need for world-wide BDS.
Jurisdictions are CHOSEN. The societies are separate and distinct, both culturally and politically.
If the dominant parties in each society were non-nationalist and non-religionist, then you might have a point about the nature of the communities. But, as the voting for non-nationalist parties in all of the Palestinian elections was 0 or close to it, and the voting for non-nationalist parties in the Israeli elections was around .5%, your assertion might be ideal to some thinking, but is not accurate nor practical.
Again, you might want to fly 100 yards across the chasm, but by the paths that are possible its a 100 miles drive, starting in a different direction. You know that the road goes where it goes, but you stare lustfully across the divide, apparently waiting for someone to build a bridge (100 years maybe).
Palestinians can’t repair the holocaust. They can avoid racist invocations, like our “friends” Cliff and Taxi, pouring salt on wounds.
They can acknowledge that Israelis had and have strong motivations that they will defend, to the extent that any hope for a single state by external force will require inhumane and actually impossible isolation.
They can pursue paths that are possible, and desirable, rather than paths that are merely uniformly angry.
So now Witty opposes democracy on principle.
Who’s the fascist now?
Who knows how you came up with that one?
So, Witty, the 43 year-old occupation is “a temporary condition?”
That’s some view you have from your nicely nested doorway, you old green “Vermonter.”
It’s hard to understand anything when you’re dead. That’s why the Zionist supporters like Witty keep on calling for “understanding”.
Witty, let’s get something straight. The vast majority of both Israelis and Palestinians on the ground support 2 states.
Given this reality, why in the world does the settlement machine chug on?
Ongoing settlement activity is the one and only factor that makes 2 states an impossibility. Do you not see this? With the erection of every building, the creation of every Jews-only road, the destruction of every olive tree is another nail in the coffin of 2 states.
Why not spend your rhetorical energy working to stop the settlement machine, since for you, a single state is the worst possible outcome?
And please don’t confuse the verbal sparring of grown men on this site with the conflict itself… or is your point that the suppression of millions of Palestinians is justified because Chaos and Taxi hate you, you need a safe haven “just in case?”
“Now, we have the opportunist flirtation with single-state led by Palestinian nationalists, urging cultural and academic isolation of Israel, in the name of freedom of expression no less and full democracy no less.”
I tried to tell you Richard, that armed-sovereign-state schtick is a tough gig! But tell me, you figure screeching and blathering on Mondoweiss is more effective than going to Israel and fighting for your people’s survival? Maybe you’re right, much better to stay here in America and see which way the wind blows before you make your move. I can just hear you in about, oh, five years: “Israel, why no, I never supported Israel, not really” And the nice part is, you won’t be lying!
“Many Palestinians have never heard of the holocaust for example, or they’ve heard of it as a remote theory.”
That’s my problem, Richard, and I apologise, I go off half-cocked (it’s as easy as falling off an ideolog) before I take time to understand your comments. I wish I had taken more time to understand what you meant, but now I do, and you are right; if the Palestinians knew more about the Holocaust, they would understand that what the Zionists and Israelis have done so far is nothing compared to what they could do, and be accordingly warned.
Hey, good plan Richard, it might work.
Where is everybody? Sure, the 11:00 service is more elaborate, but I like the early Mass at my local schul.
I was watching Avatar. Not my choice, just humoring my sisters. Great computerized visuals; old half-baked historic themes, stereotypes, and a Disney romance to boot. Sister’s lasagna was great!
Guess who the Palestininan audience will identify with, and the Iraqi and Afghanistan audiences; in fact most of the world beyond the USA and Israel.
This discussion reminds me of an old question, that has interested me for the last few years. Why does Israel exist? At one point, and I am totally losing my grip on how long this was, it was sold as the refuge from the holocaust. ie. that it was the not-unique but serious attempt at genocide meant that Israel was need as where survivors could live in greater safety. However, since then we all know that Mr Obama was actually attacked by Israeli’s for saying this, and that it is a pure religious entitlement.
Some background. I grew up in a neighborhood that had no Christmas trees in december. I knew a number of elderly people who had numbers tatooed on their forearms. Some, and by no means all older teenagers had visited kibbutz’s. I can’t speak in depth for their reasons, but mainly it was simply a supervised trip overseas. At that particular time, for what it is worth none chose to emigrate to Israel.
All I mean to say is that Israel is and was not the only refuge for those who espose the Jewish religion.
If the nation of Israel had existed before WWII would it have protected the european jews? We all know that it actually did very little in the fact. It wasn’t nearly as heavily armed as it is now, but we can also look at Armenia. There is a nation state of Armenia, and it was unable to prevent the genocide in Turkey. All holocausts are different in their specifics but in many ways I see the same issues arising in all of them. By the time it is clear that genocide is in progress, it is too late for most of the victims, and the pace of killing has already slowed.
Surely then, in the age of missiles and the high impact air warfare, objectively it would be far safer to establish many places of safety, and not depend on one?
The religious argument though is very disturbing, since this denotes sustained religious persecution of the Palestinians.
I take it as read, as documented on this site, that the myths are lies, or if you prefer myths. This is the nature of religion, fine. However, as suggested by one rabbi of my acquaintance the fascination with particular places on the west bank, including Jerusalem is surely classic idolatry, and proscribed?
“However, as suggested by one rabbi of my acquaintance the fascination with particular places on the west bank, including Jerusalem is surely classic idolatry, and proscribed?”
Where do you find those anti-Semitic Rabbis? Look Mr. Southern Observer, if we don’t have something, something material, something real, to fight and die for, how can we tell who is a real Jew? It can’t be devotion to God, nope, “eee” tells us that “atheist Jews” are the best kind, and that neatly cuts out all that religious mumbo-jumbo. So we have to judge a Jew by his devotion to the nation, the Jewish nation. And what better way to do that than see who is willing to die or kill over a bit of land?
Or do you have a problem with the Jewish religion, mister? Oh crap, now I’m all mixed up. But it’s easy to see that the best Jews are dead, and the next-best Jews unapologetic killers! So an Israeli who both kills a bunch of the enemy and dies in the attempt is the ideal Jew! Oh crap, that sounds like a suicide bomber.
I’ll get back to you, but don’t forget, you’re a Jew-hater, an anti-Semite, and a dirty denier of self-determination! So there. And I’m going to have that Rabbi defrocked!
thanks Mooser. I should say up front that this is one man. Downunder at the mo, most are just ‘do you agree that Israel has a right to exist?’. They managed to get the cartoonist for our national paper fired during the Gaza attack for being pretty mildly critical.
This discussion reminds me of an old question, that has interested me for the last few years. Why does Israel exist? At one point, and I am totally losing my grip on how long this was, it was sold as the refuge from the holocaust. ie. that it was the not-unique but serious attempt at genocide meant that Israel was need as where survivors could live in greater safety. However, since then we all know that Mr Obama was actually attacked by Israeli’s for saying this, and that it is a pure religious entitlement.
Some background. I grew up in a neighborhood that had no Christmas trees in december. I knew a number of elderly people who had numbers tatooed on their forearms. Some, and by no means all older teenagers had visited kibbutz’s. I can’t speak in depth for their reasons, but mainly it was simply a supervised trip overseas. At that particular time, for what it is worth none chose to emigrate to Israel.
All I mean to say is that Israel is and was not the only refuge for those who espose the Jewish religion.
If the nation of Israel had existed before WWII would it have protected the european jews? We all know that it actually did very little in the fact. It wasn’t nearly as heavily armed as it is now, but we can also look at Armenia. There is a nation state of Armenia, and it was unable to prevent the genocide in Turkey. All holocausts are different in their specifics but in many ways I see the same issues arising in all of them. By the time it is clear that genocide is in progress, it is too late for most of the victims, and the pace of killing has already slowed.
Surely then, in the age of missiles and the high impact air warfare, objectively it would be far safer to establish many places of safety, and not depend on one?
The religious argument though is very disturbing, since this denotes sustained religious persecution of the Palestinians.
I take it as read, as documented on this site, that much of the religous attachment is based on lies, or if you prefer myths. This is the nature of religion, fine. However, as suggested by one rabbi of my acquaintance the fascination with particular places on the west bank, including Jerusalem is surely classic idolatry, and proscribed?
More like the scene from Berzerkely,
Zombietime is a great blog to see what these cretins are all about
More of the same “Smash the Jewish state” Scrotal inflation, bla bla bla